Volunteers from StreetDoctors (formerly the Liverpool Project), a 2012 new radical that teaches young people potentially lifesaving first-aid skills.
Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose for the Observer

Four years ago, the Observer and Nesta, the charity that promotes innovation in society, jointly launched a hunt for Britain’s 50 new radicals – people, projects and organisations changing the world for the better, finding creative solutions to the big issues of our times including poverty, housing, loneliness, climate change, social care, dementia, unemployment and the waste in food, land and buildings.

The Liverpool Project gave young people from Liverpool Youth Offending Service training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation

Then, we had no idea what the response might be. We knew that many of the people we were looking for would be working below the radar of national media. As Geoff Mulgan, head of Nesta, wrote, we wanted to find examples of inspiration, drawing on talents, assets and capabilities that would otherwise lie dormant in a community, to make a difference in very practical ways, sometimes small, occasionally on a grander scale. We wanted to seek out and celebrate unusual partnerships across professions, neighbourhoods and skills that were refashioning the relationships that citizens have with one another, with the government and with the places in which they live, to make a difference for the better at a time of biting austerity and diminishing resources in the welfare state.

In 2012 and again in 2014, the response was tremendous and came from all corners of the UK. Many of those first 100 radicals have faced difficulties and challenges but they have also flourished and evolved. The Liverpool Project, for example, set up by two young doctors, Nick Rhead and Simon Jackson, in 2008, taught young people from the Liverpool Youth Offending Service, aged 11 to 17, training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and what to do in a stabbing. Medical students were recruited as volunteers and helped to raise aspirations as they explained that there is no “safe” way to stab a person to teenagers too accustomed to violence on the street.

Last year, the project, now called StreetDoctors, taught 1,968 young people in 12 cities, using 315 volunteers and there are eight known cases of young graduates of the course assisting in a medical emergency. “We work with high-risk young people to help them understand the medical consequences of violence,” says Jo Broadwood, chief executive. “They learn it is not about death or glory but could mean a colostomy bag or an amputation. As importantly, we treat young people as potential life-savers, capable of making positive choices.”

Another winner, Transition Network, originating in Totnes, is now connected to Transition Initiatives across the world, encouraging communities to self-organise to rebuild resilience, limit waste and reduce CO2 emissions. Or take Streetbank from the 2014 cohort, which helps neighbours to swap and share items such as power drills and stepladders and skills such as teaching a foreign language, strengthening local communities in the process. Rubies in the Rubble – “The more you put in, the more you get out” – utilises less-than-beautiful fruit and vegetables that would otherwise be jettisoned for handmade jams and chutneys, and provides jobs for those on the margins.

Is it time for doctors to prescribe volunteering?

Read more

Magic Me’s project Cocktails in Care Homes offers company, fun, alcohol and a sense of occasion to those in residential care. Sunday Assembly, now with a global reach, provides a humanist Sunday service. WikiHouse, again now operating internationally, allows an individual to design, download and build a home.

Today we are launching the search for the radicals of 2016. Two elements have changed since we began five years ago. First, the so-called “sharing economy” has become a £9bn worldwide industry, according to PwC. In Britain, it has its own “trade” organisation, Sharing Economy UK (SEUK), chaired by Debbie Wosskow, founder of Love Home Swap, which allows families to swap homes for a holiday. Homeowners can now rent out their driveway (JustPark) and make £465 a year on average, while on a corporate scale, companies such as Uber taxis, Zipcars, TaskRabbit and Airbnb have profited hugely. But questions have also been raised about fairness, workers’ rights and who really gains and who loses in what sounds mutually cooperative but which may have a darker side.

What we are looking for are individuals, organisations, charities and projects whose aim is to improve life for the better, helping to strengthen civic life in the process. In the recirculation of goods, and skills; in the exchange of services; in the sharing of assets; in putting together the familiar with an extra twist (Meals on Wheels, for instance, came out of delivering food during the Blitz – add the arrival of cheaper cars in the postwar years and those isolated at home, had a meal and company).

Professor Juliet Schor, a sociologist involved in a six-year analysis of the sharing economy, points out that technologies are only as worthwhile for “building social solidarity, democracy and sustainability” as the political and social context in which they are employed. And that brings us, to the redefinition of the word “radical”.

In recent years, the term “radicalisation” has gained an increasingly tainted reputation. Radicalism, in a non-party political sense, needs to be reclaimed. It has always been a part of the Observer’s history. It is driven by a belief that a system can be better, more socially just, and more effective for the majority and not just the few.

Radicalism as we define it values what matters most – the connection we have with one another, and the need to support the innovation that can keep communities alive and flourishing even at the bleakest of times. So the hunt for the new radicals of 2016 begins. We hope that they will help us answer the question posed by David Cameron’s former adviser Steve Hilton, in his book More Human. How do we design a world in which people not profit comes first?

Paul Richards, far right, at a Stay Up Late event. Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer

Paul Richards, 46, bass player and father of four, was a support worker at Southdown Housing Association, Brighton, supporting people with learning disabilities when he met Jim, a resident with a desire to be in a band. For the next 15 years, Jim, Paul and three others performed at gigs as Heavy Load. “We couldn’t play, so punk found us,” Richards says dryly. Glastonbury and New York were followed by an award-winning documentary released in 2008. At the same time, the idea of Stay Up Late was born, “promoting the right for people with learning disabilities to have a choice about how they live their lives”.

“When we played, we noticed that at 9pm a lot of our fans disappeared,” Richards explains. “We came up with the idea of gig buddies.” Stay Up Late is a charity that in 2014 was selected as a new radical. Its ethos is “keep it punk” – have ideas, put them into action quickly, experiment, fail and sometimes triumph.

Last year Stay Up Late matched volunteers to people with learning disabilities and together they attended more than 600 gigs. Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton, for instance, now provides two free tickets for every show.

Richards worked as a volunteer for two days a week for years to get the charity off the ground. This month he became a full-time employee. Stay Up Late has opened in Sydney, Australia, supported by the local council, to contribute towards regenerating the dying live show industry. Richards is also in talks with Portsmouth city council to turn gig buddies and its various pop-up activities into a membership scheme, funded by the personal carer budgets of those with special needs. “You can’t buy friendship – and that’s essentially what gig buddies is about – but a membership fee will help pay for the infrastructure.”

Over the next year Stay Up Late will also be working with 10 organisations to spread the concept. “We have a stall at gigs and talk to the punters,” says Richards. “When it comes to volunteering, people either don’t care, don’t think they have enough time, or don’t know how to go about it. We help. Social care is being crucified so it’s even more important to find alternative ways to give support, independence and quality of life. We help to build communities, but essentially we are about friendship and a love of gigs.

“Becoming a new radical did wonders for us,” he adds. “A lot of people got in touch. We were surprised. It’s such a simple idea. We thought somebody else would have come up with it first.”

When Bio-bean was chosen as a new radical in 2014 it had only been in existence a short time. Judges decided that with a lot of self-belief, luck and chutzpah, it could work. Two years on, building on the concept that Arthur Kay, 25, devised while training to be an architect, Bio-bean is a multi-award-winning green-energy company that industrialises the process of recycling coffee grounds into advanced biofuels.

According to Bio-bean, each year the UK generates 1.8m tonnes of CO2 emissions by disposing of 500,000 tonnes of coffee waste, costing up to £50m. At the moment, most coffee grounds are sent to landfill, incinerated, or sent to anaerobic digestion. Bio-bean’s process offers an alternative in the circular economy.

Bio-bean has attracted significant investment – £400,000 – and has grown to a 20-strong team, with a factory in Cambridgeshire in a disused aircraft hangar that has the capacity to turn 50,000 tonnes of coffee waste – one in every 10 cups of coffee drunk in the UK –into biochemicals such as antioxidants used in flavourings, liquid fuel, and biomass briquettes to create, for example, coffee-powered barbeques. Coffee waste that would have been sent to landfill sites at a cost, now has the chance to pay its way.

Bio-bean grew out of Kay’s architectural project to design a zero-waste coffee shop. “Where others see waste, Bio-bean sees resources in the wrong place, demonstrating that urban structures are open to sustainable redesign. As cities expand, we are faced with the chance to reconceptualise the way in which food, technology and waste shape our lives and our built environment.”

The founders of Digital Mums – Kathryn Tyler, 39, from the Rhondda Valley, and Nikki Cochrane, 44, from Essex – were selected as new radicals two years ago. The social enterprise was prompted by a single issue – maternal unemployment. More than 2 million women want to work, and 1.3 million would like to work more hours if flexibility could be built in to allow for family life. Digital Mums married small companies that need access to social media with mothers at home to build jobs in their own communities.

The scheme provides women with five months’ training in all aspects of social media – at a cost of £1,999, some of which can be recouped in grants and loans – and offers them work experience and support to find a job once the training is completed. For those five months, a digital apprentice works with a company for 10 to 15 hours a week, at a cost of £300 to the company. The first course included Cochrane, Tyler and eight mothers. Now Digital Mums, housed in a container on a canal in Hackney, consists of a team of 20 and is raising £230,000 in equity to expand domestically and internationally. It has trained more than 150 mothers with a further 100 going through the system.

Cochrane and Tyler are arranging for 10% of profits to go into bursaries to subsidise women on low incomes. They have also created a second programme (costing £999) that teaches mothers to develop social grassroots campaigns, for instance in slow food and the arts. “We wouldn’t be as successful as we are if the mums weren’t so good at what they do,” Tyler says. “That’s the key. We have accessed untapped talent sitting at home waiting for the change that allows these women to earn and finally have a better work-life balance.”

Katharine Hibbert, 34, had been writing and campaigning for several years about the lack of affordable housing and the twin impact of empty houses on neighbourhoods when, in 2011, she decided to set up – initially with difficulty and tricky financial juggling – Dot Dot Dot. It is a social enterprise committed to making a social impact that places property guardians, who pay £55 to £95 a week plus bills, to live in a property. They undertake to maintain it and give a minimum of 16 hours a month to volunteering.

“I believe strongly in the value for people who volunteer – as much as for those who secure help,” she says. “So many people are working hard to make a difference, running sports clubs, staging plays. They sacrifice their time and they don’t do it for the kudos, lifestyle or cash. I loathe the idea that nice guys finish last. I’d like to live in a world where more people do what’s positive for others.”

Last year, Dot Dot Dot’s team of 13 staff provided housing for people who gave 24,327 volunteering hours to more than 300 organisations, amounting to a value of more than £343,000. Dot Dot Dot property guardians also hold social events and know they share a common set of values. “New radicals in 2014 mattered to us because these kitemarks show you have been recognised for the impact you’re making,” Hibbert says. “It also helps with staff recruitment and retention. For people in the office every day, it’s validation, something for which they can feel proud.”

In October, Hibbert moved from her role as chief executive of the company to director, and now has more time to learn from other countries about how they are tackling the housing crisis. Dot Dot Dot is also expanding in the south-east, where high costs mean the housing crisis is most acute.

“I was angry and upset when I set up Dot Dot Dot. I wanted to do something practical,” Hibbert says. “But property guardians aren’t the answer to the crisis in housing. We need to do so much more to radically change the picture.”